Toleration Persecution And The State Notes

Toleration, persecution and the State

Notes:

• The views on toleration and persecution are widely focused on the toleration/persecution of other Christian denominations, completely ignoring Judaism and Islam

• Treaty of Augsburg 1555

• Treaty of Westphalia 1648

• The increase in witch hunting after the Reformation

Lecture:

The Impact of Religious pluralism:

• Pluralism; more than one religious group

• Could lead to persecution…

  • Massacres

• … Or toleration

  • Compromise & coexistence

• A destabilising force?

• Influence on state development?

State development:

• Historians argue for importance of state gaining:

  • Monopoly of armed force

  • Monopoly of taxation

• Schilling, Harrington and Smith argue for importance of state’s monopoly of religion

• Official state churches emerged like the Church of England

  • Tried to control peoples spiritual belief

  • Lots of preaching

  • Use of the printing press

  • Promotion of a similar religious message on a national scale

• If all the people in a country believed in the same religious message, they would be less likely to question the authority of their rulers, whom their God apparently has chosen

• This was the opposite of the localisation of religion seen throughout medieval Europe

• Religion was promoted to stimulate the development of the state

• Religion used to override local identity

• If you wanted to be a government official you would have to belong to the state church

  • Even in the Dutch Republic

Confessionalisation model (Schilling):

• Confession - the document that spells out the belief system of a given church

• In both Catholic and Protestant countries we see:

  • More bureaucracy to impose a single religion

  • Widening field of state activity – e.g. moral regulation

  • Religious identity can bind nations together

  • Enhanced religious position of rulers

• This confession-building occurred through social-disciplining; stricter enforcement by the churches of their particular rules for all aspects of life in both Protestant and Catholic areas

• Treaty of Augsburg establishes where you live determines your religion and within that area no other religion can be tolerated

• Only some features of Confessionalisation model present in every country

Critique of Confessionalisation Model:

• Weakness of state power

• Reality of widespread religious pluralism

• Controlling what people think is harder than controlling what people do

Existence of some forms of toleration:

• France

  • Formally tolerates Protestants (Huguenots) from 1585 – 1685; Edict of Nantes

  • Edict revoked in 1685

• England

  • Some toleration of Catholics

  • Toleration act for English Protestant ‘Dissenters’ (1689)

  • English toleration fluctuates according to how the state acts towards Catholicism

• Poland-Lithuania

  • Confederation of Warsaw 1573

    • Extended religious tolerance to the nobility and free persons and is considered the formal beginning of religious freedom in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth

• Transylvania

  • Declaration of Torda (1568)

    • Recognised legal status of all religions in the country

    • Religion is faith and therefore in Transylvania it was not allowed to persecute someone because of their religion

• When persecuted religious minorities gained power, they often began to persecute other religious minorities and therefore...

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